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Volcanic eruption in Alaska linked to social conflict in ancient Egypt? - With Dr Joe Manning - Context S2E6
506 Plays4 months ago
Historical accounts, archaeological data and recent environmental research brought to light multiple accounts, where the fates of entire civilizations have been affected by climatic events and resulting social conflict. In this episode of archaeological context, we focus on the first century BCE in the eastern Mediterranean region. A period marked by the end of the reign of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. Recent multidisciplinary research by the guest of this episode, Dr Joe Manning from the Yale University, has highlighted the pivotal role played by a massive volcanic eruption in Alaska and resulting climatic fluctuations, that likely helped to trigger this transformative moment in the middle of the first century BCE.
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00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:06
Speaker
are
00:00:11
Speaker
volcanic eruptions in Alaska linked to social conflict in ancient Egypt? Historical accounts, archaeological data, and recent environmental research brought to light multiple accounts where the fates of entire civilizations have been affected by climactic events and resulting social conflict. In this episode of archaeological context, we focus on the first century BCE in the Eastern Mediterranean region, a period marked by the end of the Roman Republic, the rise of the Roman Empire, and the end of the reign of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt.
00:00:53
Speaker
Recent multidisciplinary research by the guest of this episode, Dr. Joe Manning from the Yale University, has highlighted the pivotal role played by a massive volcanic eruption in Alaska and resulting climactic fluctuations that likely helped to trigger the transformative moments in the middle of the first century BCE. Here's already an extract of our conversation. Cleopatra is having a lot of difficulties, not just with now flooding, but with ah a lot of threats to her ah to her independence, to egypt Egypt's independence, um threatened by Rome actually for quite a long period of time as Rome has come to dominate the Eastern Mediterranean world since around 200 BC or so, since the defeat of Carthage for sure, Rome was becoming more and more dominant.
00:01:47
Speaker
So it's a real turning point the last 50 years BCE, certainly in Mediterranean um history. And the volcano, the Aukmuk is a very large eruption. It's no ordinary eruption. You can see photos photographs ah from satellites of Omnak Island on a clear day. And you can see the caldera. of Okmuk 2, as it's called, the eruption in 43 BC now. It was quite large eruption. It's the largest eruption in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 2,500 years, um for example. So it's a very significant eruption. It had global climate impacts, it looks like.
00:02:26
Speaker
um And it certainly impacts Nile flooding, we know, from historical sources um for probably a few years um at a time when the Nile flood was already sort of weakened from just natural variability. So this looks like this compounds problems in Egypt.
00:03:03
Speaker
As a quick overview, the Ptolemaic Kingdom emerged in 305 BCE when Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general of Alexander the Great, seized control in Egypt and established his dynasty. It would last for nearly three centuries until the reign of the famous Cleopatra VII ended in the year 30 BCE. Despite being of quote Greek descent, the Ptolemais ruled Egypt by blending Hellenistic and Egyptian traditions to some extent, and adopting the title of pharaoh, for example. Alexandria, their capital, flourished as a center of culture, trade, and architectural advancements,
00:03:53
Speaker
Signified, for example, by the legendary Great Library and the Pharaoh's Lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. However, economic difficulties, especially grain shortages, inflation, oppressive taxation and ethnic tensions often led to riots and public disorder. Without going into the details here, many uprisings are recorded for Ptolemaic Egypt in the 2nd and 1st century BCE.
00:04:24
Speaker
like for example the Memphis Revolt, the Theban Revolt, the Great Revolt, or the Alexandrian Riots. These social conflicts also reflect the complex dynamics between Greek rulers and the Egyptian population during the Ptolemaic era. Eventually, internal conflict as well as external pressures, especially from Rome, led to its eventual annexation by the latter in the year 30 BCE, ending 300 years of Ptolemaic rule in Egypt.
00:05:01
Speaker
As we heard, mainly grain shortages led to these revolts, and historical accounts paint a vivid picture of environmental distress with famine and resulting disease gripping Ptolemaic Egypt, especially in the first century BCE. So the question arises, what caused these grain shortages in such a well-organized ancient society? To answer this, we turn to recent findings from well-dated volcanic fallout records in six Arctic ice cores, which have unveiled evidence of a colossal volcanic eruption in early 43 BCE, originating from Alaska's Okmok volcano.
00:05:48
Speaker
This catastrophic event marks one of the largest volcanic eruptions of the past 2,500 years and severely affected the northern hemisphere, with temperatures plummeting to levels unseen in millennia. Climate proxy records show that 43 and 42 BCE were among the coldest years in recent millennia in the northern hemisphere. Earth system modeling suggests that radiative forcing from this massive, high-latitude eruption led to pronounced changes in the hydroclimate, including seasonal temperatures in specific Mediterranean regions as much as 7°C below normal.
00:06:34
Speaker
And also, contemporary written sources describe unusual climate conditions, especially the so-called nylometer measurements recorded on papyrus scrolls. In short, a nylometer was an ancient instrument used in Egypt to measure the river Nile's water levels during its annual floods. It consisted of a series of marked steps or a graduated column placed in a well or along the riverbank. By tracking the height of the Nile's floodwaters, the nylometer helped to predict agricultural yields, tax levels, and potential for famine.
00:07:17
Speaker
The measurements therefore provided a critical information for managing irrigation and understanding the seasonal flooding essential to ancient Egyptian agriculture. Taken together, the hydroclimate turmoil from the outbreak of the Ocmock volcano in 43 BCE led to crop failures and food shortages, which sparked repeating and widespread social conflict in ancient Egypt. 2000 years after the outbreak of the Okmok volcano, we today also face many different climate crises across the globe. The intricate correlation between volcanoes, climate and societal dynamics underscores the fragility of civilizations in the fate of environmental distress.
00:08:08
Speaker
The urgency of integrating historical insights into modern-day risk assessment and mitigation strategies should therefore be evident. As we face the uncertainties of the future, the adaptation strategies of the past can maybe help us towards climate resilience and sustainability. And with that, I am very happy to present you my conversation with Dr. Joe Manning, professor of Classics, History, and the Yale School of the Environment from the Yale University.
00:08:44
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are
00:08:50
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um Professor Manning, thank you very much for taking the time to to speak with me. And maybe first, I was wondering, considering the Nile's crucial role in sustaining life and shaping ancient Egyptian civilization or our civilizations, How could volcanic eruptions from the other side of the world, specifically the Ocmok volcano in Alaska in 43 BCE, alter the annual floods of the Nile in Egypt?
00:09:22
Speaker
That's a great question, Noah. It's great to be here with you this afternoon for me. Yeah, um yeah it's ah it's a bit surprising ah to a lot of people to realize that there there are these global connections, what climate scientists call teleconnection, between um a large eruption um and the the East African monsoon, which is the driver of the annual flood of the Nile River. But the we have now established, climate scientists have established for a while, this this um this teleconnection um through the atmosphere. um It's relatively um relatively complicated. um It has to do with the sun and solar ah
00:10:00
Speaker
solar radiation hitting the earth or reduction thereof. um And the East African monsoon is quite sensitive to this radiative forcing, as it's called. um So it's ah it's a very interesting phenomenon. It's quite complex. I don't think it's fully worked out yet even, um but I think the basics are the dynamics of the atmospheric circulant of the monsoon is pretty well established, I think. So that's how it's connected. Okay. And um so what were the broader implications of this of this eruption for for agriculture and also trade in the, well, now speaking in the Eastern Mediterranean region during this period of the of the first century BCE?
00:10:48
Speaker
This is a very interesting period historically, of course, the last 50 years BCE and the in the Eastern Mediterranean, other places in the world too. But in the Eastern Mediterranean, it's quite a dramatic period um as the Roman Republic is coming to an end um in civil war um and military campaigning by some some famous generals, of course. I'm looking for advantage, um but it's also the the Egypt of Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemaic um kings, the last ruling dynasty of Egypt. And we know that Cleopatra is having a lot of difficulties, not just with now flooding, but with ah a lot of threats to her ah to her independence, to Egypt's independence.
00:11:30
Speaker
um threatened by Rome actually for quite a long period of time as Rome has come to dominate the Eastern Mediterranean world since around ah around 200 BC or so since the defeat of of Carthage for sure Rome was becoming more and more dominant. So it's a real turning point the last 50 years BCE certainly in Mediterranean um history. And the volcano, the Okmuk is a very large eruption. It's no ordinary eruption. You can see photos photographs ah from satellites of Omnak Island on a clear day. And you can see the caldera.
00:12:06
Speaker
of akmuk Okmuk 2, as it's called, the eruption in 43 BC now. It was quite large eruption. It's the largest eruption in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 2,500 years, um for example. So it's a very significant eruption. It had global climate impacts, it looks like. um And it certainly impacts Nile flooding. ah We know from historical sources, for example, Um, for, uh, probably a few years, um, at a time when the now flood was already sort of, um, weekend for, from just natural variability. Uh, probably we know in 50 BC and 49 BC, the now flood was, and even 47. The now flood was already low.
00:12:51
Speaker
um So this looks like this compounds problems um in Egypt, um and we don't have agricultural records. So we can't say for sure it impacts agricultural production, of course, but I think it must have um given um the several years of of low flooding. It would have it would have been a critical shock to agricultural production, which is dependent completely on the annual flood of the of the river. So it would have impacted food supply. agriculture production to some extent. um We can't directly prove it. I don't have price data, for example, that would show that. But um it seems fairly logical it would have impacted agriculture. And there are also hints in the northern part of the Mediterranean world and Italy and other parts of the eastern of Mediterranean that there are also problems with with agriculture in these years.
00:13:42
Speaker
um if i can If I can ask ah to this, so we we don't know, we don't have any records about agricultural production if if it was lower because I mean, do we have records of lower taxes that they got or that they needed to shift maybe to import more rain from other places or how do we have no records of this? Yeah, no well, we we have historical we have historical hints. There's a ah famous text from 50 B.C. where Cleopatra ah issues a royal decree statewide, under pain of death, merchants must ship grain to Alexandria. So there' it's already very sensitive. um A very large city, of course, is quite vulnerable. We have historical records in the late 40s B.C. that talk about ah
00:14:28
Speaker
food crises, um people are panicking, um and and local governors are trying to figure out how to save the day. So um it's pretty clear there's stress um from the historical record we have. We don't have a lot of direct historical records from this period, which is interesting, and it might be related to all the chaos. actually, that things just don't survive. and but But everything we have tells um the same story, that there's now flood stress. We hear that Cleopatra opens up the rural granaries in Alexandria to feed people, for example. That's a fairly extraordinary move as well. So um everything we do have suggests that it was a very distressed period.
00:15:11
Speaker
um Interesting, yeah. And exploring this evidence from social conflict and maybe migrations or or shifts in in power dynamics, um could you shed light on how volcanic aftermaths affected this resource availability and and specific and unrest specifically in Ptolemaic Egypt? Yeah, so ah the now project that I've been directing now for a while with lots of great scientists and and colleagues around the world, including some colleagues in Barron, Michael Siegel, for example. um you know We begin to see patterns of now flood behavior and volcanic eruptions. ah Usually, eruptions perturb the East African monsoon for maybe a year or two, depending on the time of the eruption. What's so critical about
00:15:59
Speaker
Okmukh eruption is Joe McConnell and um colleagues um in Ireland, Jill Plunkett in Belfast, the Tefra analysis that she did that fingerprinted Okmukh is astoundingly good science. But Joe's dated the eruption to the winter of 43 BC, and that's really significant. So January, February, that's how precise yeah um he thinks he can date this eruption from from Greenland ice course. That's significant because the Nile starts to flood ah in June every year. The monsoon rains um hit the Ethiopian highlands, which is about 80% or so of the annual flood of the river, the the the Blue Nile source.
00:16:43
Speaker
and That begins about June, and then it floods through the summer. um So if an eruption begins in June, it's not going to impact the annual rainfall then, because it's already raining. yeah So the fact that it's winter um is really important for Aukmuk, because that's enough time to impact the annual flood of the river that year in the summer of 43 BC, we think. And it looks like from the from the tree rings um that the impact of Alkmaoke is several years. I mean, the cooling the cooling is incredible. It was quite cold um in that the following summer, for example, um and very wet in the north part of the Mediterranean too. So it has rather dramatic impacts.
00:17:24
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I read like said seven degrees lower than usual in in in your paper. Yeah, seven degrees Celsius, I think. Yeah, that is actually quite shocking. I mean, that's really, it gives you a sense of of how big um the impact um of Auchenbach would have been. Yeah. And speaking of the the impact of Okmak, your research hints at adaptations also in legal systems and and maybe trade networks due to these ah climatic shifts or eruptions. ah Can you provide insights into how such events influenced legal frameworks or or also economic practices in Ptolemaic ancient Egypt?
00:18:10
Speaker
That's a big question. I'll try to do my best. Yeah, so what's interesting, of course, about volcanic eruptions um is that normally with climate history, we're used to working on on on decades um or centuries. And volcanic eruptions typically will impact ah climate, will cool the Northern Hemisphere, for example, for a year, maybe two. um ah So, I mean, on one hand, what what we've been doing with people like Michael Siegel um and Joe McConnell at the Desert Research Institute
00:18:44
Speaker
um is is trying to look at decades deck ah and multiple eruptions in a decade and that happens quite often. So the ice core record is really important for us because we can see pretty stressed out decades. The 160s BC we've worked on, for example, ah And um there's a second eruption ah before, aug mc I think it's 47 BC. So when you have clusters of eruptions, it it looks like there's a new paper that just came out with Michael Siegel and others that that does suggest that there is a compounding effect of two or three eruptions that happen in a short period of time. So it'll prolong the cooling. And so that's that's important for us to look at. And that's just a bad year.
00:19:26
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For example, because um with grain storage in the Mediterranean world, in Egypt in particular, um you can store grain for maybe two years. So that gives you your buffer. um And if if you have a problem more than two years, you're going to be really stressed. And and that that that that happens so on several occasions um in Egypt in the Ptolemaic period. um We think we have really stressed out decades. um And the one sixties is another one. The forties and the thirties, early thirties BC looks like it may be another one. So these are sort of cold decades.
00:19:59
Speaker
um in In fact, um now there there are adjustments, ah there are some, there's fiscal adjustments and in how taxes are collected. um we We can see some even some switches of um the crops that are grown, for example, that farmers may not like um to grow wheat. um One of the things that's interesting about this period in Egypt is there's a major emphasis on free threshing wheat, ah bread bread wheat that the Greeks prefer. um And um that's quite drought sensitive, um for example, compared to emmer wheat or barley. um So if a switch ah if really if the switch of crops is adding more risk in the country in the countryside, um
00:20:42
Speaker
it doesn't do well in drier conditions, then you might understand why it is that farmers prefer to switch to it maybe a hardier graincraft that might do better. So we think we might even see some things like that. There's like a like local strategy that's not surprising, but we we can think we can see that in in um in tax records, for example. um In terms of law, ah I kind of try to remember what we talked about in terms of ah legal assistance, but of course it's related to how the economy um is is working, how taxes um are are collected.
00:21:16
Speaker
um We think, for example, that um in stressed out decades, what we're trying to work on now are things like social indices of stress. So you might get more ah an increase of violence or more legal petitions um but that come in in really stressed out periods of time. we've We've looked at that as well. We have work to do on that um more, um for example. So we can we can we think we can see patterns of of responses. ah Not just a bad year, but to a bad to a bad decade. um and how and how the How the state is trying to respond because the state needs the grain um to pay for many things, including military activity, um to pay for the bureaucracy, and et etc. and um Farmers need to survive too. so we actually We think we can see different societal responses
00:22:11
Speaker
from the top down. um Let's say from from this kind of work, this kind of the volcanoes are interesting because they're therere quite discreet shocks to the system. And because the dating resolution now is pretty good, We think we can have an historical window onto ah societal responses. um And we're not trying to be determinist. We're not just saying, a you know, flood failure and end um bad things happen. and we We see a lot of resilient responses. We also see, by the way, I think technological responses, some new irrigation machines and so on to help with poor flooding.
00:22:48
Speaker
Um, so, you know, there's some good or resilient responses to these stresses to stress. Sometimes it's good for a society. You can see it. You can see society is adjusting, um, almost year by year, um, you know, in a resilient way, it's not collapsed. It's not, um, always, uh, a horrible thing, but it's these slight adjustments. We think we can see now all that means just to conclude here, um, about this topic, um, that. um It's not just climate or climate change and then, oh, look, there's a response. So climate change causes X, Y, or Z. In other words, historical causality, this very challenging thing. No, I think what it does now, it gives us as historians, especially an opportunity to go back to the historical record and kind of rethink how the how do these societies work and how do they change over time? So if the climate data, I think, forces historians to be better historians.
00:23:44
Speaker
that's That's a great way to look at it. yeah And maybe one one small ah question that that that's wrong to my mind now, I usually work in analyzing neolithic graves and stuff. So we do a lot with bone analysis. And I was just now wondering if you say that not just a bad year, but maybe also a bad decade, do you also incorporate like analysis of and stable isotopes from from Egyptian graves to to really also see that maybe the nutrition standard or or growth of of the teeth, of the bones. And so does this data also come into your your models? um You know, it should um and it certainly could, um but I would say not yet. It's not always easy to get access to um to human remains that that are in Egypt.
00:24:33
Speaker
um there There is an expert, a bioarchaeologist coming to the conference in Beren in a couple of weeks, okay whom ah I will talk to about this. She works in the Sudan mainly, but but she she does work on this um there. um And i because Egypt is one of these places where we do have a lot of human remains, um I think it's quite possible um to to so to have a look at it. and There are challenges, including dating of the human remains, I suppose, um certainly from the archaeology, but maybe there's there are um more scientific um ways of getting at them, of ah more precise dating with C14 or other methods. um But yeah, I think it's um it's an untapped
00:25:14
Speaker
uh or virtually untapped ah resource yet or or archive um that some specialists do work on but we haven't put the whole picture together yet but it would be great i think to try this to examine what um things like that are telling us same with animals presumably Yeah, yeah. And the second thing that also ah sprung to my mind from from your last comments, you said about the states, ah the the responses of the state. um I read in in one of your articles that they even had to halt or or draw back from a war that the Ptolemaic Egyptians had thought with the Seleucids, I think in English.
00:25:57
Speaker
um yes But I guess all all of these, um that also the Seleucids were affected by this Ocmok eruption and the cooling that that led that that followed it, or were they less, were some civilizations less ah affected because they were not so dependent on like denial floodings, for example? Yeah, that's i mean that's great. Now we're talking about global so you more global climate um responses to Okmuk. It did have global um impact. um I'm pretty sure we would find—well, no, actually, I think the Babylonian astronomical diaries stop in the 60s B.C.
00:26:40
Speaker
I'm being somewhat silly. These records we have from Babylon in the last six centuries BC that record the heights of the Euphrates River, but also commodity prices and weather observations and astronomical observations too altogether. They're remarkable text, but I think they end in the 60s BC. So I don't know if we have direct evidence of the Euphrates. flooding in the 40s, but I think there are there are historical records that suggest some stress um there. um Yeah, I would would be shocked if there were not. um We also know in China in the late 40s BC and 30s BC, there's widespread famine. So it looks like the East Asian monsoon was so impacted.
00:27:22
Speaker
Yeah, thanks. and And maybe as a final question, um drawing parallels between ancient responses and contemporary climate challenges, ah what strategies or resilience measures from the past can maybe give us hints in addressing today's environmental crises? I mean, I think historical the historical work on climate um change, i I'm writing a big book on this now, so this is front on my brain. At the moment, does it does historical experience matter for us going forward because we're in ah quite a different world? In terms of historical experience of change, we're we're warming. i mean Historically, it's the cooling periods, either short or longer term, which that seem to be more problematic um for humans. That's the record of the Holocene, these these downturns that are cooling downturns. so But I think there's still a lot of ah
00:28:16
Speaker
a lot of important things that we can draw from, including just the wider – I mean, the more examples we have of human experience of climate change, I think you know the more um diversity of human experience we have from from around the world, how humans respond to different kinds of change um is just an important database that to have. It gives us more um more understanding and more things to think about human beings living in and particular environments. um So I think in general some very important general things we can we can take away from historical climate um work. We know the kinds of change that happen um naturally. um For example, some the natural variability of the climate system, ah for example, and the forcings the radiative forcings
00:29:03
Speaker
um from solar activity um and from volcanic forcing. and We know what what happens now. It's very well studied by Michael Siegel. um In the last couple of years, especially, he's published a full Holocene record of volcanic eruptions. This is extremely valuable information. and Volcanic eruptions are the number one, the most important short-term driver of climate variability. That's really important to understand, um I think. And, of course, they're not predictable. um So um we have to be sort of um aware, I think. We have to tread lightly on the Earth, just in general, I think, to to live gently on the Earth, given that we live on it and we live in the environment still. We're not separated from them. So I think a lot of our more philosophical things that we can take away from human experience
00:29:55
Speaker
um that I think matter a lot. I think more than is given credit in in public policy um thinking actually. Yeah, thank thank you very much. It was really interesting to to to speak with you, to hear more about about your research. And the yeah, i hope I hope we will see each other in at the conference in Bern in June. I'm looking forward very much to that, to being there in this beautiful city. And I look forward to seeing you there and thanks for chatting. thank you very much thank you very much pleasure
00:30:27
Speaker
pleasure
00:30:37
Speaker
Alright, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed this insight of how the combination of climate modeling, written sources and archaeological data can tell us more about past human-environment interactions. Thanks again to Dr. Joe Manning, and if you enjoyed it as well, please follow and subscribe to this podcast. This also marks the last episode for season 2 and it was fascinating for me to cover such a diverse range of topics and speak with archaeologists from Ukraine, Syria, Colombia or Ghana. I already have some interesting things in the making so hopefully you'll tune in in a couple of months for the third season of Archaeological Context with Dr. Noah.
00:31:45
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.